the George Washington bow

[tom sawyer]

This will be the story of my attempt to make a mulberry longbow.  The wood came from an older tree growing in an old cemetery that I lived across from.  It was pushing over the headstone of on George Washington, who happened to be the fire chief of Hannibal in the early 1900s.  I asked the arborist for the butt log and he was only too happy to comply.  I tried to make a few bows with this wood and they all broke so I'm not getting my hopes up too much.  This last attempt is using a set of sister billets, they are well seasoned now since the tree WA s cut nearly 10 yr ago.

I cut the Z splices for these billets for a mojam demo, and glued them with resort ol last night.  Everything  went well save for one little snafu.  I forgot the billets were about 42" long, so the stave is 80" long!  Little too long for me.  I'd cut it down but the tips have a wonderful little flip so I'm going to cut the splice out and re-splice.  That or I can just make a pole vault pole.

[tom sawyer]

A little long for the "tall as the man" rule of thumb.

[tom sawyer]

This may work to my advantage since I think I may use an elb style rather than American longbow. This stuff is light as yew.

[PatM]

If they have been breaking you may be better off going with the longer length. Will Thompson shot a bow 6' 6" long.

[lebhuntfish]

I'll keep my eye on this, I saw you cutting those out!

[Pappy]

Hadn't seen you on in a while Lennie,good to see ya back. I am also working on a Mullberry,not quite as long tho. You are right,light as a feather.
  Pappy

[tom sawyer]

I mostly lurk Pappy, I go in spurts on making stuff these days.  Spend more time processing wood than building bows.

6'6" is one long bow!

[Marc St Louis]

If they were tension failures then you may want to consider a shallow D section bow.

[tom sawyer]

Unfortunately I don't recall what the failures were due to Marc, it may well be that I was trying to use a design ill-suited to a lightweight wood like this.  I'm going to try a true longbow design with the cross-section you mention.  I may even back it, I have rawhide in the shop although I don't know if the strips are 36" long.  That'd probably be a wise move.

Respliced the bow last night, so its now about 72".  I made the splice 1 1/4" wide this time so I can use that as my full width, which is very nearly as wide as the rest of the billet anyway.  I pulled the clamps off this morning and set it out on the porch so it can finish curing in a nice warm spot.

[SamIAm]

Good luck Lennie.  I'll be watching this one too.  I've got a Mulberry in my yard; just waiting till it gets a little bigger to cut.  It's only about 6" in diameter right now.

[tom sawyer]

Yours should be getting close then, I prefer a younger smaller tree.  8" is great for hedge or any wood with a sapwood you're goign to remove.  I think they tend to be stronger and have somewhat less diseases, inclusions etc.

[PaulN/KS]

Hey Lennie,
I think an 80" long bow would have looked pretty cool. Looking forward to seeing where this goes Amigo.
Oh,I might have some 36" rawhide strips down in the shop. (If the mice didn't get them.. )
I'll check and post later.

[tom sawyer]

Pulled out a pair of rawhide backings I got from Mike Yancey some time ago.  38" each, sweet.  Roughed the shiny surface off the bow back, cut the backing strip to size and soaked in water, made up some hide glue from gelatin, sized the bow back and hide strip and applied then wrapped with string to hold it down.  Seemed to work well, having enough glue let's you easily squeeze out air bubbles and extra glue.  Also helps greatly if the hide isn't larger than the back.

[tom sawyer]

Pics.

[PaulN/KS]

Sure are making some progress with this one. Looks good.